E. B. White Quotes

I wouldn't touch a superlative again with an umbrella.

I've seen 'Pride and Prejudice' about 4,000 times. I'm not joking: I know every single line.

Hyperbole was to Lyndon Johnson what oxygen is to life.

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.

Hyperbole is something I'd better avoid.

The speaking in perpetual hyperbole is comely in nothing but love.

Reality bears no relationship to the super-heated rhetoric.

Never a man to understate matters

Amplification is the vice of modern oratory.

Hyperbole engaged in consciously to achieve a desired effect can be, as we have noted, a useful rhetorical tool. Indeed, its use in this manner is sometimes called "exaggeration in the service of truth." However, there's much to be said for restraint of tongue and pen, and restraint refers not only to what we say but also to how we say it. It is possible, believe it or not, to be emphatic without indulging in overstatement; it is possible to be forceful without exaggerating.

Hyperbole is not easily dealt with. Usually, it collapses under its own weight.

You know what's the greatest part of anything ever in the history of everything? Exaggeration. No, wait; it's correcting yourself. No, better yet, it's making lists.

You thunder and lightning too much; the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by.

Some so speak in exaggerations and superlatives that we need to make a large discount from their statements before we can come at their real meaning.

There is apparently no surer way of turning a thing into its opposite than by exaggerating it

Everything is 'colossalized' - events, fortunes, accidents, climate, conversation, ambitions - everything is in the extreme ... They can't even have a tram run off a line, which in England or France might kill one or two people, without its making a holocaust of half a street full. ... The thing which surprises me is they should still employ animals of normal size; one would expect to see elephants and mammoths drawing the hansoms and carts!

I was raised by and have raised people who regard telling one story when two would do as a sign someone is not really trying.

I tend to basically exaggerate in life, and in writing, it's fine to exaggerate. I really enjoy overstating for the purpose of getting a laugh. For another thing, writing is easier than digging ditches. Well, actually, that's an exaggeration. It isn't.

I am soooo excited, I am over-excited. I'm hysterical, I may have to slap my own face in a minute at this rate.

Exaggeration! was ever any virtue attributed to a man without exaggeration? was ever any vice, without infinite exaggeration? Do we not exaggerate ourselves to ourselves, or do we recognize ourselves for the actual men we are? Are we not all great men? Yet what are we actually, to speak of? We live by exaggeration.

The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people's fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That's why a little hyperbole never hurts.

Maybe he overreacted a bit." - "A bit? That's like Hitler saying, 'Oooh, I just meant to go for a little walk, but then I accidentally invaded Poland".

Exaggeration is in the course of things. Nature sends no creature, no man into the world, without adding a small excess of his proper quality. Given the planet, it is still necessary to add the impulse; so, to every creature nature added a little violence of direction in its proper path, a shove to put it on its way; in every instance, a slight generosity, a drop too much.

Oh, don't mind me! Just the queen of the heavens, dying over here!

Exaggeration is a prodigality of the judgment which shows the narrowness of one's knowledge or one's taste.